Sep. 1, 2009

Written by

Documents from the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners show the suspect in the Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping was rated as a “moderate risk” parolee when he was released in 1988, despite a record as a violent predator who could not control his sexual urges.

Once on parole, Phillip C. Garrido had few restrictions on his activities. He was required to go to California where his mother lived, maintain steady employment, submit to searches and drug tests, get substance abuse counseling and enter a federal community treatment program for sex offenders, records show.

There were no restrictions on his contact with children.Last week, Garrido and his wife, Nancy, were indicted in El Dorado County on 29 felony counts in connection with the 1991 kidnapping and sexual assault of Jaycee Lee Dugard, then 11.

In 1988, he had been released in Nevada on federal parole and relocated to California. In 1999, California Parole and Probation took over his parole from the federal system.

He violated his federal parole in 1993 and spent four months in a federal prison, but federal officials in California have yet to release any details of that violation or explain why he was again released into the community. Nevada officials said they were never notified of Garrido’s parole violation, which would have allowed the state to revoke his parole.

The Nevada parole board records for Garrido, now 58, show he was released in August 1988 after serving less than 11 years in a federal penitentiary and less than seven months in Nevada state prison. Garrido had been convicted of the kidnapping and rape of a 25-year-old Tahoe City woman in 1976.

His federal sentence on the kidnapping conviction was 50 years and the state sentence was five-years-to-life for the sexual assault. The sentences ran together, which meant he was eligible for state parole after serving five years in the federal prison.

Nevada parole documents from the 1980s obtained Tuesday by the Reno Gazette-Journal, show that Garrido had three parole hearings: May 1984, March 1986 and August 1988. Garrido was still in prison in Leavenworth, Kan., at the time of the 1984 and 1986 hearings.

(Page 2 of 2)

In 1984, the five-member parole board denied Garrido’s parole application because of the nature and severity of his crimes, his previous criminal history, the fact that his crime injured another person and because the inmate failed to show he had reformed. The board further noted that Garrido’s release would “depreciate the seriousness” of his criminal behavior and his release might endanger the public.

Garrido’s 1986 parole hearing, again conducted in his absence, also ended in a denial of parole for the same reasons noted in 1984.In January 1988, Garrido was released from Leavenworth early based on good behavior while in prison. He was sent to Nevada state prison and appeared at his third parole hearing Aug. 4. In that instance, Garrido was graded on a “risk assessment” system and received a “moderate” risk grade.

The assessment measured criteria including prior felony convictions, the use of a weapon in a crime, whether his victim was injured and other factors. Garrido’s score was a 6, with 10 being a perfect “low risk” score.

But he received 2 points for not previously serving time in jail even though he had been arrested, convicted and sent to Contra Costa County’s Clayton Farm facility on drug charges in 1969.

If the California incarceration had been counted against him, Garrido would have been given a score of 4, making him a “high risk” parolee. It’s unclear whether that would have made a difference to the parole board.

The board voted 3 to 2 to release Garrido. Of the five members of the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners in 1988, four are now dead. The fifth, Aybbi Kinsley, who voted not to release Garrido, couldn’t be located this week.

Gail Powell, spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said the commissioners’ notes of the 1988 deliberations in the Garrido case, even if they could be found, are not public record under Nevada law.

Newspaper articles from the late 1980s show Nevada prisons were overcrowded at the time and the parole board was coming under fire for releasing large numbers of inmates, particularly sex offenders who had served fractions of their sentences.